


Stoic and Cruelly Beautiful

by SadakoTetsuwan



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ballet, F/M, Gen, Overskins 'Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 10:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18141092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadakoTetsuwan/pseuds/SadakoTetsuwan
Summary: Watching her in the role, it is impossible not to see an ancient and world-weary sylph queen, and seeing Lacroix’s leaps and turns, it’s clear this creature needs no man to lift her when she dances. Lacroix glides across the stage with such effortless beauty and elegance, one must wonder if she, too, has magneto-repulsor assistance





	Stoic and Cruelly Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> This was my fic submission for the Overskins 'zine--my first time really writing for Widowmaker, save for a few cameo bits or short appearances. 
> 
> Once the incredible art for my piece has been posted, I will link it here!

_Don’t look at the audience._

It seemed so counterintuitive. Rule number one of an engaging, successful performance is to look out at the crowd, draw them in and turn their attention, their energy into something you can use in your performance, like spinning fleece into fine yarn. The easiest way is simple—look at them. Give them your attention in exchange.

But not now. Not for _this_ role.

Dry ice fog was already spilling into the trap, the last thing Amélie saw before closing her eyes. When she opened them again, she would no longer be Amélie, after all. No longer a young woman dancing on stage with her husband in the box, surrounded by dignitaries and ambassadors and aristocrats in the red velvet seats all waiting eagerly to see her in her element once again.

The lift made a soft whirr, the only warning that it was about to move before smoothly rising. The golden hum of the harp and the silvery notes of the strings in the pit filled her ears. She took a breath, the air slightly musty from the fog effect. That, she supposed, was simply what the air _would_ smell like if she were a spirit. When she felt the lift lock into place, her eyes slid open and a different woman stepped off.

She was no longer Amélie Lacroix, dancing on the greatest stage in Paris; now she was Myrtha, a _queen_ , and this stage, this theatre, was her ghostly kingdom, the rapt faces in the crowd her subjects—if not now, surely when they were dead they would belong to her. Wisps of fog followed her as she strode elegantly, confidently from behind the grave markers and rose _en pointe._ Her jaw was proudly raised, her neck arched, her body all the graceful curves that her opposite number, Babette-3, could never have no matter how precise her steps or what outer plating she had equipped.

“ _Watching her in the role, it is impossible not to see an ancient and world-weary sylph queen, and seeing Lacroix’s leaps and turns, it’s clear this creature needs no man to lift her when she dances. Lacroix glides across the stage with such effortless beauty and elegance, one must wonder if she, too, has magneto-repulsor assistance—”_

She caught sight of her subjects—the _corps de ballet—_ waiting in the wings of the stage, their faces covered with wispy veils of cloth. With her scepter of rosemary in hand, Amélie—no, Myrtha—summoned them to the stage and issued her royal decree: _dance_.

As Amélie retreated from the stage and hurried to her next entrance point, she couldn’t help herself. She broke character for just a moment, her eyes scouring the box seats to stage right.

‘You’ll have the very best view from there,’ she had promised.

There—! Perched on the edge of his seat like an eager little bird was Gérard, flanked by several faces she recognized as other Overwatch agents. While the others watched the _corps_ dancing, Gérard’s attention was turned to stage left, seeking her out with just as much focus.

The grin that split her face, so stoic and cruelly beautiful on stage just minutes before, was bright enough to catch his eye. He waved his handkerchief, a little flash of white in the darkened theatre. Amélie waved back with barely restrained joy. Between her demanding schedule in the studio and Gérard’s work around the globe, they rarely caught moments together. Even the smallest of exchanges between them were animated and gleeful, and made Amélie feel like she was falling in love all over again.

“ _The irony of the casting is not lost on this reviewer, of course—for the role of Giselle, the impassioned and delicate young maiden whose heart is on her sleeve to be danced by an Omnic, and for the role of Myrtha, the cruel and heartless Queen of the Wilis to be danced by a human whom we have seen in such passionate roles in the past—”_

Amélie quickly schooled her expression, trying to push that moment of joy down. She turned away and pinched the inside of her arm, just beneath the puffy sleeve of her costume. Myrtha was jilted, Myrtha’s love was betrayed. Myrtha lived—as much as a spirit-being can ‘live’—for vengeance against men. Myrtha could not love, so from the moment she stepped on stage to the moment she left, Amélie could not love.

_Don’t look for him again._ _Myrtha would have him dead if she saw him._

Amélie’s jaw was set as she caught her cue, and Myrtha strode back onto the stage.

“ _What social commentary is Laurent trying to make with this casting? That Omnics may yet be our saviors, as Giselle saves Albrecht? That it is humans who are the cruelest of creatures, as all of the Wilis, who sentence both the guilty Hilarion and innocent Albrecht to death, are danced by humans? Or is it, perhaps, that love is truly blind, that love can be found in the most unlikely of places, that love can overcome all—from the preconceptions about Omnics to which so many still cling, to even the grave itself?”_

. . .

Widowmaker could not feel the cold nipping at her nose as she knelt in the cemetery, carefully brushing the snow from Gérard’s grave. She knew she ought to be feeling something for the man she killed—she could remember loving him just as vividly as she could see the red of the rose in her hand, but it was like remembering a story told by someone else. It was a curious thing, no doubt.

She laid the newspaper clipping on the frozen ground, the rose partially obscuring the publicity photo of herself, aloof and alluring, and Babette-3 in a perfect arabesque. Her eyes drifted to the last line of the article for the hundredth time since she had boarded the plane to Paris for her annual pilgrimage.

“What a foolish notion,” she sighed, stoic and cruelly beautiful.


End file.
